Behaviour analysis for large language model-driven agents

Tianqiang Yan, Lizhen Qu

Understanding language-agent behaviour requires learning how actions are organised across a trajectory and how this organisation relates to context and outcomes. We propose a general framework that connects data-driven behavioural discovery with analysis and experimental investigation. Categories developed from recorded activity define what is measured. Analyses preserve the behaviours' positions in the process and express their relationships as interpretable hypotheses. Statistical assessment and tests in held-out contexts examine the strength and scope of the evidence. Experiments, including prompt steering, then test how behaviour and outcomes change under deliberately varied conditions. A study of iterative self-reflection illustrates how discovery, dependency learning and prompt comparisons can inform one another. We develop this approach for trajectories of varying length, event order and agent roles, and identify advances in coding, analysis and experimentation needed to support its wider use.